While all eyes were focused on Egypt the past few weeks, big news stories in the United States were completely buried and ignored.
One of the most disturbing was the introduction of the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act by Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., to Congress. Essentially, it seeks to ensure no federal dollars will pay for abortions or go to insurance plans that offer abortion coverage. Think of it as codifying the Amendment from the Health Care bill.
Regardless, federal dollars have been banned from going toward abortion since 1976, except in the rare cases of rape and incest or to save the life of a woman.
Abortion does not matter here. The crucial aspect is the language Smith slipped in to the bill. Instead of allowing exceptions for rape, he wrote “forcible rape” without including a definition.
Forcible rape does not even need to be defined because it is a frame. As soon as you heard it, you probably imagined a woman walking down an alley at night when all of a sudden a big, burly man jumps out and rapes her at knifepoint. Whoopi Goldberg insensitively called this “rape-rape.”
We can all agree this situation is terrible, but the vast majority of rapes are not in this Hollywood fashion. Seventy-three percent of women know their rapist, according to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network.
Since college women are four times more likely to be raped without the use of a weapon, imagine the legal rights of women if this verbal hijacking spreads beyond this piece of legislation.
So, sorry ladies, if you were raped whilst intoxicated, underage, unconscious or if you are mentally handicapped, the Republican Party does not think you suffered enough to get some help.
The language was recently removed from the bill, but I am disgusted that 205 representatives signed their names as cosponsors, including all five of Oklahoma’s representatives.
Democratic majority leader, Nancy Pelosi, aptly described this bill as, “The most comprehensive and radical assault on women’s health in our lifetime.”
It does not surprise me at all that so many members of the GOP would want to redefine rape. When you are blinded by male, white privilege, like Smith, it is easy to ignore the trauma of rape and make the definition fit your narrow beliefs.
I am at a loss to explain why the House of Representatives is neglecting more pressing issues like improving the economy or cutting the $100 billion representatives promised from the federal budget.
Both seem to have taken a back burner to trying to undo the actions of the last democratic congress (e.g. repeal the Health Care bill) and push legislation that will win themselves brownie points in their home districts.
Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, commented that taxpayer dollars should not go to a cause that voters are morally opposed to and that “Our members feel strongly about the sanctity of life.”
Well, John, I am diametrically opposed to my tax dollars going to a number of institutions like this war in Iraq, subsidies for meat, teaching children mathematics and incarcerating women in Oklahoma, but I suck it up and pay my taxes. I understand taxes go toward the collective good and are necessary, especially to help the poorest and most vulnerable in our society — such as rape victims.
— Shayna Daitch, international security studies senior
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chas036 1 year, 3 months ago
When it comes to abortion, conservatives are a bunch of hypocrites. They yell and scream that abortion should be illegal and banned, and not funded by taxpayer money. Then on the other hand, they fight tooth and nail to reduce and eliminate taxpayer supported welfare benefits and social services to the poor, where the vast majority of this welfare is used to support out of wedlock children. Do you see the hypocracy here!
For all practical purposes, conservatives should be promoting abortion and encouraging taxpayer supported abortions as a means of keeping unwed mothers off welfare. Since the vast najority of abortions are done by the poor because they can't afford to have another baby, the conservatives should be promoting free abortions as a means of reducing the poor population in this country with the ultimate goal of eliminating welfare handouts completely.
TheJeff 1 year, 3 months ago
Ms. Daitch,
If a bill were up that immediately ended the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan, meat subsidies, (not?) teaching children math, or the (wrongful?) incarceration of women, would you applaud the effort? Would you come out against the effort, saying that even though you're against them, the government does do things you don't like, and we should just accept and understand the wars? No, we would applaud an effort to end them.
If you were an elected representative, would you vote yes to end the War in Iraq, especially if that's what you've always professed to believe and it's what your constituents expect you to do? Of course you would.
Speaker Boehner is absolutely right. He should do what his members and constituents expect him to do. That is the point of democracy. They were elected to do something. Not to sit around and "accept" things.